Wendell & Wild protagonist Kat marches to the beat of her own drum — or rather, her own boom box. In the new stop-motion animated film from Coraline director Henry Selick, the orphaned young rebel lets her freak flag fly with an Afropunk-inspired soundtrack that echoes throughout the film. For Kat, it’s a connection to her deceased father and a battle cry against the establishment; for the audience, they’re also just good tunes.

Selick has a long history with Afropunk as a genre — he directed the “Party at Ground Zero” video for funk/ska band Fishbone in 1985. For help curating Wendell & Wild’s soundtrack, Selick turned to music supervisor Rob Lowry. “Henry’s a genius and super collaborative,” Lowry tells Tudum. “They had had some stuff in there, but we were brought on as a sounding board. We do clearance work and make the film feel cohesive musically.”

When Lowry joined the project, the film’s soundtrack had a much different feel — one more inspired by Kat’s demonic rivals, Wendell and Wild, played by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele in the film. “When we first came on there was a lot of Motown stuff,” Lowry says. But as the film changed, so did its sound. “Henry really leaned into Kat’s character as the North Star in terms of the taste of the film and the perspective of the film musically,” Lowry says. “And because of that, he really leaned into kind of the Afropunk of it all.”

In the world of Wendell & Wild, Kat is a true original. And her perspective carried over to the film. Rather than centering on the titular demonic brothers, Selick shifted towards telling a story about Kat, and her musical taste followed along. “I think if we would’ve leaned [more] into Wendell and Wild’s world, it would’'ve felt a little bit broader,” Lowry says. “And I think that would’ve been a disservice to the film because of how unique and how cool and how fresh the perspective is.”

That meant shifting over to a soundtrack dominated by artists like Death, Big Joanie and TV on the Radio. But while Kat is now definitively the lead of an Afropunk-infused version of Wendell & Wild, there are a few reminders of the previous, more demon-centric iteration of the film. “There's still some remnants of the Wendell and Wild thing where there's the Hot Chocolate song and even ‘Ghost Town’ at the beginning,” Lowry notes. “It walks that line of fun and self-aware and kind of goofy.”

Lyric Ross Creates Kat's Voice for Wendell & WildLyric Ross goes into the booth to voice act some of Kat's best lines.

And, of course, Lowry still had to supervise musical choices for the film’s scenes of magic and mayhem. “If we're pitching something for a Wendell and Wild scene, it’s still based on bringing out these characters,” he says. “Not necessarily ‘what are Wendell and Wild listening to?’, but really accentuating those characters and their personalities."

Kat blasts her own playlist loud and proud, but Wendell and Wild don’t have a boom box of their own in their unique world. What are they listening to? “When we came on there was a lot of older funk and soul,” Lowry says. “There was everything from Leo Sayer to Hall & Oates, some yacht rock, some ’70s FM pop.” What could be more demonic than that?

You can listen to Kat’s playlist on Spotify. Wendell & Wild hits Netflix on Oct. 28.

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